After firing warning shots what did you expect them to do? Why don’t you just turn up at a major US airshow and walk over to the F-22 with a camera and refuse to get pushed back and get a photo of the cockpit.
Compassion? Hahahaha.

1) I would not expect them to shoot down a civilian airliner full of
passengers. It would have been easy enough to identify the airliner and
lodge a formal diplomatic protest rather than killing a few hundred men,
women and children.
2) If I walked up to an F22 at an airshow with a camera and ignored warnings
I would most likely be wrestled to the ground and arrested – easy enough
as I am an old codger. It would be extremely unlikely that I would be shot
in full view of hundreds of spectators.
3) Just because everyone on this thread disagrees with your preposterous
supposition does not mean that you are necessarily wrong. In fact it made
me think that I may have read somewhere about a second
Spetnatz diver by a grassy knoll.:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

So the Russians admit killing a man for “spying”….real or imagined.

So what else is new?

If you were the Russian, what a better way to sooth your conscious (if you have one :diablo: ) than saying the (probably) unarmed man you killed was planting a mine.

A bit off topic here but this put me in mind of KAL 007 when I watched the interview with the pilot of the Flagon that shot it down. He spoke of an ‘intruder aircraft’ for which read ‘Commercial airliner full of innocent civilian passengers’. Compassion was never one of the Soviets strong points.

Another theory is that whilst the russian probably did kill Crabb, he might have looked at his meagre pension and decided to sell his story and in the process larged it up a bit by the inclusion of the Limpet Mine element. My humble opinion only. 😉

The story I heard was that Crabb was tasked with checking out the propellors which were supposedly of a new design and would seem far more plausible than planting a mine. Purely as an aside, he was an ex pupil of the naval training school I attended – HMS Conway.

An excellent report and pictures. I almost feel as if I had done the journey myself! Japan certainly seems to be more spotter friendly than Europe although I have not been myself, but I have heard this from a few people who have.

Superb set of pics. Thanks for sharing them.